Small delights, innocent pleasures

Small delights, innocent pleasures

Recently I've been enjoying small, simple pleasures whenever they appear. It's a handy past time especially for those of us who are staying indoors for a period.

The sensation of water as I wash my hands, the warmth of a ray of sunshine coming through the window, and this type of thing.

Earlier this week I read a few lines of poetry from Hafiz, he tells the reader to keep ‘squeezing drops of the sun from the most insignificant movements of your own holy body’ and this really did strike a chord.

It reminded me of a passage in an old book that I read a while ago and I wanted to pass it on to you. Here it is, do let me know what you think.

“Among the mind's powers is one that comes of itself to many children and artists. It need not be lost, to the end of his days, by anyone who has ever had it. This is the power of taking delight in a thing, or rather in anything, not as a means to some other end, but just because it is what it is.

A child in the full health of his mind will put his hand flat on the summer lawn, feel it, and give a little shiver of private glee at the elastic firmness of the globe.

He is not thinking how well it will do for some game or to feed sheep upon. That would be the way of the wooer who’s mind runs on his mistresses money.

The child’s is sheer affection, the true ecstatic sense of the things inherent characteristics. No matter what the things may be, what they are good or no good for, there they are. Each with a thrilling unique look and feel of its own. Like a face; the iron astringently cool under its paint, the painted wood familiarly warmer, the clod crumbling enchantingly down in the hands, with its little dry smell of the sun and of hot nettles; each common thing a personality marked by delicious differences."